Health Costs

The chairwoman of a key House health panel has gone on record as saying that Georgia’s largest health insurer is acting as a “bully’’ in its dealings with medical providers.

State Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-Marietta) also said Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia “disrespected” the House Health and Human Services Committee by failing to send a representative to the panel’s meeting Monday, which discussed complaints against the insurer.

Rep. Sharon Cooper

The comments were part of an intense hearing at the state Capitol on the insurer’s actions in the Georgia market. Blue Cross is by far the biggest health insurer in Georgia.

“I have never heard this many complaints [from medical providers] in terms of getting contracts,’’ Cooper said at the panel meeting.

The health committee also passed a bill that would establish safety requirements when a patient is switched to a special “interchangeable biological” drug. These medications are not yet on the market, but could provide cost savings to consumers in the future.

But Cooper and other lawmakers focused most of their energy on Blue Cross. full story

For the past nine years, Anne Walden has enjoyed her job of driving a school bus through rural areas of McDuffie County.

“I absolutely love it,’’ says Walden, 60. “I love my kids.”

McDuffie County

But it’s still a job, and Walden is clear about the underlying reason why she does it: health insurance.

“We don’t make any money’’ compared to what other occupations pay, Walden said Monday, noting that her income is $8,800 a year. “Most drivers drive for the benefits.’’

But the health insurance that Walden gets through the state employee and teachers plan would end at the end of the year, if Gov. Nathan Deal’s budget proposal is ultimately approved.

Deal’s budget plan would eliminate health coverage for 11,500 “non-certificated’’ school personnel who work fewer than 30 hours a week, including school bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

The proposal has generated broad concern among lawmakers and health advocates.

And this week, a key teacher advocacy group that made waves in 2014 by backing changes to the State Health Benefit Plan has thrown its support behind preserving the insurance options for the school workers. full story

Health care costs are increasingly squeezing American workers, especially those in Georgia and the South, a new report released Thursday finds.

Nationally, workers’ out-of-pocket costs for premium contributions and deductibles in 2013 accounted for a higher percentage of median family income in all states compared to 2003.

According to the report from the Commonwealth Fund, this higher burden for workers comes despite a slowdown in health insurance premium growth in most states, including Georgia, since 2010.

In Southern states, where incomes are below the national average, worker costs for premiums and deductibles are especially high compared with median income, the report found.

Combined costs for premiums and deductibles ranged from 6 percent to 7 percent of median household income in the District of Columbia, Hawaii and North Dakota, to 12 percent or more in Texas and Florida. The average was 9.6 percent.

Those worker costs were 10.8 percent in Georgia in 2013, up from 5.5 percent a decade earlier.

“Incomes haven’t grown as much as health care costs, so we’re all feeling it,” said Bill Custer of Georgia State University, when he was asked to comment on the report by GHN. full story

But for the past 25 years, Tucker has battled constant stiffness and pain from psoriatic arthritis.

Kerry Tucker

“Mornings are the toughest,’’ Tucker said at an Atlanta arthritis conference last week. Then there are the flare-ups that leave her in bed for days.

She’s among patients taking a breakthrough “biologic” drug – medications that have made a major difference in their ability to handle arthritis symptoms.

Yet these specially engineered drugs have a hefty price tag for insurers, employers and patients. That cost has consumer advocates alarmed about the potential financial impact on families.

Roughly one in four Georgians are estimated to have a form of doctor-diagnosed arthritis, according to the Atlanta-based Arthritis Foundation. More than 800,000 of them are “limited’’ by the condition, the CDC says.

Thousands of Georgia children have a form of juvenile arthritis. full story